Carlos Alcaraz often makes it all look so effortless.
Forehand winners torched down the line exactly where he wants them. Return shots most others wouldn’t be able to get to. Serves that immediately have opponents off-balance.
The 22-year-old Spanish superstar’s full bag of tricks was on display as he cruised past Jiri Lehecka 6-4, 6-2, 6-4, in the U.S. Open quarterfinals Tuesday afternoon at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
He will face the winner of the Taylor Fritz-Novak Djokovic match in the semifinals.
Alcaraz, ranked No. 2 in the world, has yet to drop a single set this tournament. No male player has ever won the U.S. Open without dropping a set.
“Playing great and feeling really comfortable,” Alcaraz said. “I think today I played an almost perfect match.”
No. 20 Lehecka had a chance to steal some momentum down 3-2 in the second set. Up 30-15 in the sixth game, Lehecka had Alcaraz on his back foot amid an entertaining 21-shot rally and had him scrambling to his left at the net with a backhand down the line.
But Alcaraz lunged and somehow delivered a perfectly placed backhanded drop volley that Lehecka was unable to get to. Alcaraz pointed to his ear as the Arthur Ashe crowd responded with its loudest ovation of the afternoon.
Alcaraz went on to win the game as well as the next two to take the second set and put himself firmly in the driver’s seat.
He was dominant with his serve, winning 38 of 45 points on his first serve and facing no break points the entire match.
“I felt that against Carlos, if you want to beat him, you need to win at least a few of the big points, and he won all of them,” Lehecka said. “Even when I played really good, even when I tried to put him under pressure, go to the net, change the rhythm, do something, he was there, and he had an answer for everything I tried.”
Alcaraz was stunned in the second round by Botic van de Zandschulp at last year’s U.S. Open, but — other than his new hairstyle — looks back to his normal self this time around. After beating Jannik Sinner in the French Open final and subsequently losing to him in the Wimbledon final earlier this summer, the two are again on a collision course to meet in the final.
Sinner faces Lorenzo Musetti in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.
The two have emerged as the sport’s modern gatekeepers, a status Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic held for so long. Alcaraz and the 24-year-old Sinner have won the past seven majors — Sinner with four and Alcaraz with three.
It’s a new era for tennis — and Alcaraz keeps cementing himself as one of the two faces of it.
If Alcaraz matches or betters Sinner’s result this tournament, he will reclaim the No. 1 ranking for the first time since September 2023.
“It’s really hard,” Alcaraz said, “not to think about it.”